


Rain at Swansea

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, very low-key
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 03:19:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18402041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: Greg and Mycroft are gone to ground, in hiding while Anthea hunts their pursuers. It's going to be awhile.Things proceed.This is yet another attempt at quiet, low-key, almost invisible shifts. The unremarkable made remarkable.It's honestly not very explicit. This one is more likely to turn you on with emotional resonance than graphic descriptions.





	Rain at Swansea

When Lestrade woke, it was raining. He and Mr. Holmes lay sleeping in the single room of a modest hotel in Swansea, each in pants and vest and no more…nor one thread less. They had arrived the night before. This was the third hotel they themselves had checked into that day, laying a trail of false addresses using alternate identities, drawing on fortunate reserves of aliases available to both. If all was going as it should, Anthea and her team had checked them into several more, using still more aliases.

The shell game was quite thorough. With luck no one would find them. They were far from CCTV coverage. They had arrived in clothing unlike anything associated with “Detective Chief Inspector Gregory Lestrade,” or “Mr. Mycroft Holmes (terrifying secret Rasputin of MI-6).” They carried new credit cards, new ID cards, money untraceable, car left for them several blocks from the last fast-food restaurant they’d eaten at in Cardiff.

With luck, they’d be safe spending the day here in Swansea pretending to be nothing much at all. Two men passing a quiet day in a hotel, avoiding the rainy roads, sleeping in, maybe shagging a bit. Their ID claimed they were married—one more subterfuge to muddy the waters. Neither had given it much thought, so far, knowing it was a random detail thrown into the mix by Anthea’s computer algorithms. Just one more red herring: two single men, one outted gay, the other semi-closeted bi, both best known for limited social lives were worlds removed from two partnered gays with a pre-legal marriage dating back a decade.

Keep the bad guys guessing…and while the bad guys guessed and ran down false trails, and Anthea and her team located the hunters by their presence on the hot false trails, he and Mycroft could hunker down and hide, like good little foxes, peeking slyly out between the stones of a walled hedgerow.

It was raining—raining fairly hard. The sound was soft and soothing, splattering the glass windows, dripping from the hotel eaves, shushing occasionally when a car drove past.

Lestrade felt the oddest thing—tension he had not known he had carried into sleep and through sleep, tension draining from him as his mind sorted through all the facts and concluded that they had made it through the night safely…and if so, that they’d probably truly slipped the hounds entirely. Anthea would have been online already, making it appear that the two men who’d checked in last night appeared to have moved on, replaced later by two other men from a different place entirely. Better than disappearing, those two original identities would be found moving up the coast toward Anglesey. Not lost—merely boring and uninteresting, with the married couple left in their place even more so.  
  
They’d managed the trick. They were safe. Knowing they were safe? It was like a teabag in hot water, the fear seeping out, the comfort brewing, the leaves growing soft, the cuppa promising ease. He lay in a warm bed, safe, listening to the rain and to Mycroft’s breath easing in and out. With barely a second thought he rolled onto his side, backed himself up until spine and bum budged up against Mycroft’s side—and fell asleep.

When he woke again, Mycroft was on the new laptop Anthea had left at a pickup—anonymous and shiny with no connection to his own identity—waking the machine up and teaching it to roll over and play dead. His fingers flew over the keyboard. He was humming a contented little tune under his breath…something familiar. What? Ah. “Kathy’s Song.”

I hear the drizzle of the rain, like a melody it falls…

It was still raining outside, in the world they hid from. It sounded like it intended to keep it up all day. Maybe even all week: the constant drum of an entire weather front rolling in from the Irish Sea.

“How’s things,” Lestrade managed to say, voice furry from sleep and long exhaustion previous to sleep.

“Things are, one might say, ticketty-boo,” Mycroft said. A smug little tone in his voice suggested he was being intentionally twee and Panto-Posh. “I’ll know better in another hour or so. But the info-drops I’ve dared risk looking at already suggest we’ve done a proper runner. The hunters are out chasing dozens of false leads, making themselves pleasantly obvious as they do. And we—we are safe in Swansea, holed up in a modest but comfortable roadway establishment, with access to room service and a number of local amenities to enjoy during our stay. And better than average web access.”

“Go-us,” Greg said, grinning—then stretched long and lanky and crept out of the bed, heading directly to the loo without a wasted word.

The loo had already been made good use of, he deduced upon arrival. Sink, razor, shower. Towels used and hung back up—and, oh-kindly-thought—Mycroft had placed new, clean, dry towels over the towel heater.

A good way to start the day.

The suite’s cafettiere and kettle were to one side of the wide counters. Greg set up both, unsure if Mycroft was a morning-coffee sort, or not. Greg had become non-denominational in his preferences over years in which “hot, fresh, lots of sugar and milk” had come to represent his dream, regardless of what beverage it started as. Tea, coffee, chocolate—hell, he’d even tried a “latte-maté” once, and been happy enough because it met the only criteria that mattered.

He proceeded to go through a slow, lazy morning fresh-up, with the electric kettle chugging in the background. By the time he was set, so was the hot water. He grabbed the cheap suite tray, and piled on the pot, the cafettiere, and the filled kettle, plus the suite mugs and the little baskets offering hot chocolate, various teas, a variety of sweeteners, and packaged biscuits. He fasted a towel around his waist, draped his pants and vest over his arm to get laundered, and picked up the tray, sweeping out into the main room.

“Hot tea or hot coffee,” he asked, grinning at Mycroft’s sheet-draped bum. The man was still working on the computer, but he’d rolled over and now lay on his stomach, propped on his elbows, fingers till flying over the keyboard.

“God,” Mycroft murmured. “Coffee? Hmmmmmm. Maybe…no. No. Strong black tea, creamer, and sugar.”

“Got digestives and decent shortbread.”

“Shortbread.”

“Done.” Lestrade proceeded, making their drinks, dropping his laundry in a pile on a spare chair, and changing into fresh boxers. When he was done he settled on the bed with a brand new smart-phone, part of the swag delivered with the car.

“Anthea left me a new phone,” he said. “Did she leave you any idea how to sign on? And can I get at my own damned content?”

Mycroft turned his head and studied the other man. “Lucky you. She set up an untraceable backup file of your content as soon as she knew this was on.” He scrambled in the sheets and found the little hoard of hotel stationery he was taking notes on. He took a moment and handed Greg a half-sheet scrawled with new ID information, passwords, and links to get to his digital books, his films and telly stations, his music, and his games.”

Greg looked them over and smiled. “Thorough. That woman’s a marvel.”

“My marvel, so don’t think you can steal her.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. She and Donovan would spit at each other if they had to work as a team instead of across the aisle from each other. Can we order brekkers? Don’t know about you, but even hot, sweet, and white with biscuits isn’t going to keep down the growling tummy long this morning.”

“That’s because it is very nearly afternoon,” Mycroft said, voice dry and amused. “Will you accept lunch?”

“Hell, yeah.” He closed his eyes and thought, dreamily, of a huge bacon sarnie, or an oversized American-influenced burger, or…”

“Here’s the menu,” Mycroft said, shoving a laminated sheet across the bed. “Go to town.”

By the end of the hour Greg decided life was just too good to believe. Music and a book on his smart phone, comfy bed, lunch spread around him, and nothing he had to do in the immediate future. Nothing.

“How long since you’ve been able to just hole up and relax and do nothing?” he asked Mycroft, the words a bit muffled as he munched down a cluster of perfectly fried chips.

Mycroft frowned. “Nothing? I’m hardly doing ‘nothing.’”

“You let Anthea know we were fine, you set the computer up for super-duper-bells-and-whistles SEEKRIT communication, and you’re now laying low, doing nothing but websurf. That’s close enough to nothing. You’re too smart to raise your head up where the bastards can spot the Real You.”

Mycroft grunted, and ducked his head.

“No-no-no,” Greg said, laughing. “You’re not breaking cover.”

Mycroft huffed, then said, between guilt and frustration, “No. I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I LIKE it.”

“Boooooored,” Greg moaned, imitating Sherlock. “Boooored, bored, bored! Poor baby. Find a book or a movie or, hell, a brilliant documentary. Sleep. Eat. Listen to the rain. Relax.”

Mycroft huffed…but settled, eating his own frugal lunch salad and trying to hide repeated raids on Greg’s more voluminous order of more-than-he-needed.

They were silent for a few hours, pausing long enough to clear the bed and wrap themselves in complimentary robes while the cleaning girl came in to change their bed and towels, take away the lunch things, collect their laundry, and refill the supplies.

When they settled again, it was still raining.

Greg liked the rain.

Mycroft, deep in an ebook, had stopped humming.

Greg cued up a playlist with Kathy’s Song included on it, under several covers. He went back to his own book, and fell asleep, sliding without even a clear moment of resistance. He woke to find Mycroft, too, dozing, smart-phone fallen from his limp fingers, head propped on the edge of Greg’s pillows. He smiled, put Mycroft’s phone on the bedside table, and curled up, dropping back to sleep.

The luxury of it followed him into darkness. Even sleeping he knew: he was safe. He was warm. Life was making no demands on him. He was with a friendly pack-mate, his team protecting them both.

The rain still fell when he woke again, and the late afternoon gloaming had fallen—the sun not yet down, but definitely headed that way.

“Just a song at twilight,” he sang, softly, to himself.

Beside him a small chuckle drifted out of the covers. “When the lights are low…”

A reedy, but accurate tenor. Greg warped his own baritone around it, seeking the corny barbershop-quartet harmonies. “And the flickering shadows softly come and go…”

They sang the song to the end, and started over, to pick up the first verse that had been left out before.

“You’re right,” Mycroft said, afterward, sprawled on the bed, relaxed and smiling. “I haven’t been without some form of demand on me within my memory. Perhaps never.”

“Well that sucks,” Greg said, amused. “Not good. Hope you’re going to make the most of this, then. How long does Anthea think till they’ve caught the entire hunt?”

“She’s asking for a full week, minimum, to be sure she roots everything out. Maybe longer. It’s on the same scale as Moriarty’s global team. I suspect I’ll go crazy by the third day.” Mycroft’s voice was rueful.

“Not if you plan ahead. And sleep through the drab bits.”

“There is that.”

Neither man had commented on the shared bed. The shared suite. The married cover identity.

Greg had honestly not thought about it. It was logical, and he was no babe in the woods. This was not his first time in hiding. You did what you did, and if you did it well, you came back afterward. That’s all he asked for—to have warm quarters, room service, music, books, and a decent companion was luxury.

They planned dinner and ordered it. They watched a movie together on the telly. They played a few hands of cards together. They prepped for bed. They turned out the lights, and slept.

In the late-late night, or the very-early morning, Greg woke in the dark to pee.

He slid back into bed, and smiled as a sleeping Mycroft drifted close and warmed himself against Greg’s flank. He let himself drape an arm over the other man.

He’d been married. This felt like married had, in the short time “married” had been a good thing.

As the sun began to rise, hours later, Mycroft, too, answered nature, and when Greg, half-asleep, rolled to one side of the bed, opening his arms and the sheet in a single, lazy move, he cocked his head, then settled without comment into the open space offered, nestling into Greg’s arms as they both drifted off again.

They woke together.

“Not what I had planned, originally,” Mycroft said.

“Same,” Greg said. But he smiled, and risked a soft squeeze. “Not unwelcome, here, eh?”

“Likewise,” Mycroft said, feeling an entirely unfamiliar smile steal over his face. Muscles he seldom used stretched, and his eyes crinkled happily. “I always have thought you a lovely man.”

“Same.”

They lay together, and began the slow exploration: a touch here. A sigh. A kiss.

They had a short, fast conversation about health, preferences, and supplies.

“Plenty lube,” Greg said, laughing. “Family size bottle, for men without families.”

“Condoms for when it suits us, bare when that’s the choice,” Mycroft said, smug and happy. “As for toys—we are intelligent men. We can improvise.”

“Mmmm.” Greg nipped his partner’s ear, and pinched teasingly at the inner turn of his thigh. “Spontaneous you!”

They had a lovely time.

“It preserves our cover story,” Mycroft said, after, as he stripped the bed and put on the spare sheets. “We are supposed to be married.”

“A decade,” Greg said, laughing, as he shoved the pillows into their cases and tossed them on the new-made bed. “Long past leaving hotel sheets all mucky!”

“No,” Mycroft said, firmly. “With us the magic has lasted.”

And then they stopped, frozen, eyes catching against all expectation.

In that moment, in the little, cheap room, lights glowing around them, the dark and the rain outside, it became clear.

With them, the magic would last—if they dared risk it. If they took what had suddenly, quietly blossomed.

The tension mounted, both men longing—both men as terrified by a possible “yes” as a possible “no.”

Then, with a jaunty grin, Greg dropped to the bed and spread his arms. “Oi. C’mere, you.”

Mycroft, smiling his hope and terror in a way that no one would have believed of the Iceman, slithered down and joined his lover. “Glad to.”

“What next?”

“Another movie,” Mycroft said, softly. “And cake. Let’s have hot tea and cake. It’s more **_hopeful_** than champagne, isn’t it?”

“Hopeful as it gets,” Greg agreed, and called room service to see to their order.


End file.
